


The Secrets Game

by morethanprinceofcats



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Gen, One Shot, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 20:49:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17190146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morethanprinceofcats/pseuds/morethanprinceofcats
Summary: At a party at the governor's mansion for the naval officers stationed in Port Royal, Jamaica, in the 1730s, a young Commander Norrington finds the governor's teenage daughter Elizabeth is growing into a spirited, rather difficult young woman.  Unchaperoned and liable to damage his standing with her father, she twists his arm into playing an irritating children's game.





	The Secrets Game

**Author's Note:**

> Writing Elizabeth in an RP for a moderately altered timeline wherein Norrington does not die (and he and Elizabeth eventually fall in mutual love), I came across a discrepancy in the films I wanted to resolve somehow.   
>  The sequels imply a prior intimacy wholly absent from the first one. In DMC they are clearly familiar with each other, and by AWE Elizabeth treats him like a formerly close family friend - yet in COTBP alone one would get the impression he is a near stranger with whom she is rather uncomfortable. From an RP perspective, it's hard to nail down their backstory.
> 
> I wrote this as I sought to work out what kind of relationship they might have had before he alienated her by courting her. Because some people are following the RP, I eventually chose to upload it.
> 
> Although in the RP they get together, this was written to align with their characterization in all three films. It takes place before there was any romantic intention on his part, though it sets the stage for that to develop - while going into the seriousness of her growing crush on Will Turner. Hopefully it can be read from the perspective of any ship, so long as the reader cares about this relationship in some way or other.

Commander James Norrington shut the glass-inlaid door to the veranda without pausing to admire the scrollwork, but he appreciated the scenery nonetheless.  The sound of all Port Royal’s fine society celebrating behind him was only barely dimmed, but they were still releasing fireworks over the bay, and the boom and crack of them, while dazzling at large, made him flinch and rub his temple.  That could not dampen his mood, however, and as unwelcome as their similarity to cannonfire was, they were truly breathtaking to look at. He did not mind being any closer to them.

 

There was no real need for him to leave the mansion, and he did not expect to be away from it long.  The company was good, the conversation lively and the card table was calling his name; but for the time being, the company and conversation could wait and the card table spoke in only a very soft whisper; he thought he’d jot a bit of contemplation into his busy schedule for the night, he and the tobacco he’d purchased in Virginia and had chosen to save and to savor.

 

He was taking a pull on the pipe when an upbeat female voice sounded from somewhere to the right of his elbow.

 

“Good evening, Commander Norrington.”

 

He startled, turning to look seriously and self-importantly at the speaker, though he had to expel smoke quickly and was irritatedly certain he looked foolish.  A flash of bright light in the sky far above them illuminated her and his expression changed instantly.

 

Elizabeth Swann, daughter of the governor of Port Royal, and newly sixteen, had joined him on her own veranda.

 

He greeted her with a bow, and she curtseyed at the same moment - a deep and very respectful curtsey, with an incline of the head and all the rest.  It was a far cry from the last time had had seen her, where she had been creeping out to see fireworks down at the bay herself and narrowly avoided being caught in the act of doing so.  She did not look the same, either - she had grown taller, but the dress had been cut to fit her and not some younger version of her, and even hearkened to recent fashions for lower necklines, something he knew her father would not have entertained unless he believed she were growing up.  She did look rather more like a woman than a girl, though he made an effort not to notice it in the same way one might a younger sister, loathing the thought so much as to avoid even to look at the female subject.

 

Except that that was not quite right.  Having glanced back at her once, he found he could not stop.

 

“Not enjoying the party, Commander Norrington?  My father did throw it for you,” said Elizabeth, grasping her fan and opening it, fanning herself gently.  He felt only some of the breeze it produced, but it was distracting enough to be a small annoyance.

 

“He threw it,” said James, overbearingly correcting her before he could stop himself, “for the general congregation of Navy men, which includes myself, though I suppose I must thank you for the compliment you pay me in seeking to flatter me so.”

 

“You’re a very silly man, even if you are a brave one; do you think I don’t know my own father’s mind?  He is very sorry there was no big party for you after your latest promotion. You’ll see, he is going to raise a toast to you later in the evening.  Only act surprised, for goodness’ sake, if not for mine, when he does it, I have certainly not been authorized to tell you.”

 

“Then you had better not have.”

 

“Well, if you do not tell him,” said Elizabeth, stepping closer, pausing her fanning, which was even more distracting, and, he could tell, wanting to smile even though she did not, “then what can the harm be?”

 

“Even if someone else is not there to chastize you for having been disobedient, one should still not disobey,” said James firmly, internally wincing as he saw her expression subtlely grow confused, curious, and peevish in turn.  He had never spoken to her like _that_ before.  “It is the principle of the thing.”

 

He had not dampened her mood, however, and she did not grow uninterested in seeing him now that he had been dull at her, which was a mighty relief.  Elizabeth stepped past him and continued fanning herself, though the night was cooler than many had been. “I obey my father in spirit,” said Elizabeth thoughtfully, with a put-on air of worldliness that did not fully disguise her innocent delight in having witty conversations.  “But if the letter of the law is not true to the spirit of the law - or, more materially, its intention - then isn’t one’s duty to the spirit of the law, instead? For instance: my father would want his toast to be a secret, it is true. But if he were to give it and you were not to know yourself to be its primary recipient, or to believe it was a formality and not a heartfelt gesture from a friend, a misinterpretation of which you are more than capable?  It would cause him anguish, and so, I have graciously removed all potential for misunderstanding, even if I have also denied you a surprise.”

 

“You made that up just now,” James said flatly, refusing to let himself smile and thus encourage this.  “You have always been very good at doing as you please and justifying why you did so afterward, all the while I have known you.”

 

“Commander, that is not so!” protested Elizabeth, sounding so legitimately wounded he was hastening to apologize to her when she spoke again: “I have only _just learned_ how to justify myself.”

 

He rolled his eyes upward at the sky, and could not stop himself from smiling this time.  Her peals of laughter told him she saw it, too.

 

“Furthermore, I cannot always think of a justification; sometimes I must restrain myself from things for which I can conceive of no excuse,” she said, pacing by him yet again, and practicing a coy look over her shoulder.  It occurred to him suddenly that she was toying with toying with him, on account of his being her probable only male acquaintance. It soured his mood slightly, for he had few enough of years and large enough an ego that he wanted women - or girls, however the case may be - to speak to him for his own sake.  “Such as, why I approached you just now.”

 

“ _Not_ to congratulate me on my promotion, then,” he said, in an even flatter voice, which she used to propel her own effervescent conversation as one might walk on a pavement stone in a flowerbed.  

 

“Decidedly not.  I was going to ask if you would let me try your tobacco, for I am sixteen now and I still never have.”

 

“ _Decidedly not_ ,” he rejoined instantly, and that earned him both a second of her surprise and an encore of her laughter.  “Your father would certainly never toast me if I did that.”

 

“You are the only man I think my father would allow,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “He does like you, you know.”

 

“Yes; because he trusts me.  Not to go about corrupting his only child.”

 

“Is it corruption, if the corruption is already there?”

 

“Oh, even worse.  Allow you to indulge your dark desires, and end up framed as their author?”  He paused, lifting his chin with the utmost of dignity. “As one Caribbean hellcat once told me - decidedly not,” he said, and she immediately burst into laughter again.

 

He crowned his satisfaction with a final drag on his pipe, which he had let burn to almost nothing, before knocking out the tobacco, putting it back into its bag, and replacing it inside of his coat.

 

“That was very impolite of you,” she said, having somehow or other managed to lose that sulk that had once been so characteristic of her.  It flattered her enormously. Or else perhaps her chin had managed to grow shorter, he forced himself to think instead. “I forgive you, but only by a margin.”

 

He nodded his head to her graciously. Another firework resounded, this time more discordant.  “Perhaps, Miss Swann, you had better return to the party.”

 

“Not without you,” said Elizabeth.

 

“What were you even doing out here on your own?”

 

“Will you tell me one of your secrets, if I do?”

 

That snagged at something in his mind, bothering him.  “Why is it a secret?” he asked, somewhat crossly. Elizabeth Swann made him feel younger than he wanted to feel these days; he did not begrudge Weatherby Swann’s daughter her own youthful vibrancy, but the more ambitious he became, the more he wanted to leave all of that behind.  But every time he returned to the governor’s mansion, the governor’s daughter spoke of nothing but adventures, nautical marvels, sea battles and secrets; and James was impatient to have a conversation with a woman that was about less of that and more about…. Well, nothing at all. A conversation where the topic was unimportant, and what mattered was the way one said it.

 

“You must commit to keeping it, or I won’t tell you at all,” said Elizabeth, stepping backwards into the moon-shadows of her garden, with another smile back at him.  He was starting to move from agitation to alarm.

 

“Elizabeth,” he said in a low voice.  “What do you think you’re doing?”

 

“I live here, you know.”

 

“Yes, but there’s a party going on.  People are here. Your father wouldn’t want you in the garden, abandoning your chaperone and all _possibility_ of decency.”

 

That bothered him now too.

 

“Where is your chaperone?”

 

“Mrs. Hills is returned to England,” said Elizabeth loftily, referring to the governess in whose keeping she had recently been.  “It’s my aunt now, though she’s only staying with us two more months. If that,” she continued, slipping further into shadow. He hated his awareness that he was hesitantly following her.

 

Elizabeth turned and hopped into a run, her curled hair bouncing behind her.  James cursed, very informally, and hurried after her on instinct.

 

Having attained her goal, he found Elizabeth slowed down to a walk.  He stopped himself just in the nick of time from pulling her by the shoulder to face him.

 

“She hasn’t been enjoying the humidity very much,” Elizabeth explained, as if they were still somewhere halfway respectable.  “And she likes my company very much, but finds me much wilder here than in London.”

 

That gave him a convenient enough in that he did not consider whether or not a trap had been laid.  “I’ll say,” he said angrily. “What the devil do you think you’re up to? Do you have any idea what impression this would give if we were discovered?”

 

“I _don’t_ ,” said Elizabeth, eyes widening in surprised innocence.

 

“It would look like a _seduction_ ,” he said grimly.

 

Elizabeth managed to look appropriately horrified for only a few seconds before bursting into laughter. He wasn’t charmed this time.  “Elizabeth-”

 

“You’re calling me by my Christian name,” she whispered chidingly.

 

That silenced him.  He couldn’t do anything but glare now.

 

“If I tell my father I urged you away to tell me all about your arrest of horrid Hayes he would believe me and apologize to you. I would not worry so much about whether or not this is going to torpedo your fine reputation as a gentleman.  I am a little infamous here too,” she said, and he was surprised to detect a trace of bitterness in her tones.

 

“Why, I am not shocked to hear it, Miss Swann, if this is how you conduct yourself.”

 

She cast baleful eyes at him and then looked back to the pathway.  He remarked to himself again how well it became her that she could express a negative thought without becoming thoroughly sullen.  

 

“It isn’t,” she insisted.  “You know… I thought you were my friend.”

 

Commander Norrington stopped in the footpath and Elizabeth Swann kept on, then paused and looked back at him, her fan swinging gently from the ribbon looped around her wrist.  For a moment her expression showed a fear that he had stopped out of disgust at such impropriety.

 

It was nothing at all like that.  

 

“I _am_ your friend,” he said, a weak assurance.  “I only forgot about it.”

 

Elizabeth looked hurt, then composed herself and looked back over the path.  He sighed and glanced back at the governor’s house where he could see the silhouettes of well-dressed people laughing over champagne glasses inside.  Behind his head, fireworks continued to burst, and distantly, the common people on the beaches shouted and laughed in their enjoyment of them.

 

And an apparently friendless teenager stood on the garden path between both of them, and he elected, for a little while, at least, to remain with her.  The night was still young, and so was he. And so was she - young enough to have an earlier bedtime. He would have time to stay and humor her and then have an enjoyable evening afterward.

 

He fell into sync with her footsteps, and offered her his arm, which she took as though he were trying to trick her.  But soon they found a familiar path, and, once they had begun to catch up, he found her company to be less burdensome than he thought.  Elizabeth had always been an eager conversationalist, and an unusually bright and well-read one, with a particular interest in his profession.  But it considerably eased his sense of loss that she seemed to have become a wit enough to rival any of the fine women of Port Royal’s civilized society in whose company he was not at present.

 

She asked if he had missed her at his promotion; he told her gaily he had not noticed her absence, although he privately recollected a bit of a disappointment that he could not let one person present see how smug he really felt; and she laughed and rejoined that she had noticed hers and been glad of it, something about how pompous she found the proceedings, which stung his pride.  He found he had to steer her away from the topic of the recently arrested rum-runner Logan Haze at least twice, but she took this amiably. Finally he found his throat becoming dry, and promised her only one more promenade around the garden before he insisted on returning to the party.

 

“We shall have to make this one really count, then,” said Elizabeth brightly.  He rolled his eyes discretely and plotted a response to get out before she finished her next sentence - ‘Enough of Mr. Haze, I trailed him three months before catching him and now I wish to never hear his name again’ ought to both impress and shush her - but she said something else entirely.

 

“Shall we play the secrets game?”

 

“A game?” he asked dubiously. “A _secrets_ game?  Oh, that sounds disastrous.”

 

“It isn’t a game, really.  I mean, there is no object.  It is something that my friends and I do.  Each of you has to tell one of your secrets, and then you all keep them.  If one person tells the other person’s secret, then they must all be told.”

 

He thought about this for a moment, discomforted.  He was surely too old to either play games - or to have a secret he could entrust to Elizabeth, even if she was not _exactly_ a child _anymore_.  

 

“I shall accept your proposal,” he said, grudgingly, “if you will tell your secret first.”

 

He watched her eyebrows, which had always dominated her countenance, knit together in distrust and alarm.

 

“Well, if you will not trust me then I can certainly not trust you.  I am a Commander in the royal navy and you are a teen-age girl; I reserve the right to consider myself a mite more trustworthy than you,” he said, loftily (but winking, which immediately consoled her).  She still hesitated.

 

“James, the secrets game isn’t a _game_ ,” she said, color coming into her cheeks.  “It’s serious. It’s like a vow. You vow to _never_ tell another living soul.  You have to, no matter what I say.”

 

“You haven’t killed someone, have you?”

 

“James!”

 

He did not bother to point out that she was the one breaking all the rules of propriety by using his Christian name.  Firstly, he knew she would not care.

 

He stopped walking, then looked back up to the house.  So far, no one had come out to surprise him, escorting the governor’s daughter around the governor’s garden in the highly suspicious moonlight.  They had half a promenade left. He sighed, giving in again.

 

“Has anyone ever told a secret, in your game?”

 

She shook her head.  Her curls were holding remarkably.  He wondered if her fashionable London aunt had styled them; Elizabeth had never looked so well before.

 

“Very well.  I shall play it, and I promise, I will not tell a living soul what you impart to me.  On my honor, as a man of the Royal navy.”

 

“Cross your heart,” prompted Elizabeth.

 

“Cross my heart.”

 

He looked briefly irritated.

 

“And hope to die.”

 

That seemed to satisfy her; she took his arm again, and he could tell whatever she was going to say meant a great deal to her.

 

“Well, my secret is…. Do you recall you asked me what I was doing outside, when you came out?  I was thinking. About… leaving.”

 

Every nerve in his brain shouted.  “ _Leaving?”_

 

“Not like that,” Elizabeth said hastily.  “Only just…. Vanishing a bit, just for the night.  Not even all of the night, only some. I wanted to go into town, and see… my friend.”

 

He had been too busy eyerolling to catch the last bit; it came to him with a delay.  Elizabeth Swann creeping out in a maid’s dress to see fireworks from closer up, that was not even new.  Elizabeth visitng a friend in town that she could not meet at a party at her father’s was both new and horrifying.

 

“Elizabeth, who is your ‘friend?’”

 

“He’s nobody!” said Elizabeth, visibly frightened by James’ reaction to the secret, and then hurrying to correct herself at the use of the male pronoun.  “It’s - it isn’t like that. I don’t mean that kind of a friend. And I’ve only seen him once! I behaved as though I were any other girl, trying to buy a kitchen knife, and he would only speak to me through the window when he saw who I was.  But tonight I thought…. He’ll be out, watching the fireworks.”

 

She looked back at the sky now, although there had not been fireworks in five minutes, and, James suspected, they would not erupt again.

 

James was beginning to be relieved he had left the party to smoke, and to forget he had promised not to tell Governor Swann about this.

 

“Elizabeth, just how old is your friend?”

 

“He’s sixteen, like me-”

 

“I’ve been sixteen.  A youth of sixteen is hardly a trustworthy companion, let alone for a girl of your station-”

 

“I’m not a girl!” said Elizabeth, angry tears springing to her eyes.  She was gripping her fan so tightly he thought she might break it. “And if you mean to tell me that you weren’t honest at sixteen you are a liar, and I know Will is honest too-”

 

There was only one name James knew in connection with Elizabeth that was Will, and the reference to his sharing her age as well as the implication of a smithy brought his memory immediately to mind.  He had even seen the boy a few times in Port Royal; he had once, very decorously, but with sincerity, not flattery, thanked him for his part in saving his life, which, given that James had been even younger then, had actually humbled him.

 

“Will.  William Turner?”

 

Elizabeth looked pale in the moonlight.

Her silence told him everything he needed to know about how important this was to her.  Still, if her father knew…. And if something happened of it, and James had known, and it were known he had known, and allowed such a ghastly thing to continue…. Yet if he put an end to it now, she would never speak to him again.

 

“I only saw him the once,” said Elizabeth, so quietly he could hardly hear her.  “Usually I am with others. He shoes our horses.”

 

“You realize what a position you have put me in, telling me something like this, and forbidding me to do anything about it,” he said, much more testily than he meant to.  

 

“Nothing bad is going to happen!  He asked me not to do it again. I just thought…. Because of the fireworks, I might just happen to run into him,” Elizabeth said miserably.  “I didn’t think _you_ would think it was bad.”

 

“Why wouldn’t I? Why don’t you?” He caught himself before he said another harsh word, shutting his eyes and pressing his hand over them for a moment.  “All right. I’m sorry. I did not mean to _shout_ at you.”

 

That she did not come back with ‘but you did’ told him how serious the matter was to her.  He turned to look down at her directly.

 

Elizabeth had her share of faults, but she was growing - rapidly, it would seem - into a woman of an unusually headstrong temperament, and while no Grecian beauty like her gentle blond mother had been in life, she had several pretty features.  She was proud, even aristocratic at times, without being arrogant; she was exceptionally good-humored, and it seemed even her occasional fits of petulance were disappearing as she aged. There was all in all a very good chance of Wiliam Turner’s already being infatuated with her, although at least the boy had the sense to not pursue it. Nothing good could come out of a mutual infatuation like that one.  Still, even if he weren’t half in love with her already, and James was certain he would be, the most honorable boy could slip up, faced with the temptation of a little hellcat with an angelic countenance demanding he give her his companionship.

 

The companionship James Norrington was going to lose for good if he breathed a word of it to her father.

 

“Elizabeth,” he said, leaning down towards her.  She did not look up at him, keeping her gaze fixed on the ground.  He peered anxiously towards the mansion doors, such as he could see them through the foliage.  He did not want to be caught delivering a stern, quiet speech to a distressed teen-ager, so he wanted to make it quick. “You have to promise me you won’t do that again.  Even if - even though Will Turner is an honorable boy. You would ruin his life if you were found with him in secret.”

 

Elizabeth’s breath caught in a silent anguished cry.  She looked up at him. He reached out to touch her on the shoulder, and then couldn’t do it.

 

“Perhaps you can make some excuse for this, if someone comes down that path in two minutes,” he said, gesturing to himself. “But what can you say about yourself and a blacksmith’s apprentice that does not cost one or both of you your reputations?  And if it were believed he were taking advantage of you, the governor’s own daughter. If you must see him while he’s shoeing horses… but never otherwise, do you understand me?”

 

Elizabeth shut her mouth.  For a moment, he thought she might sulk. But she soldiered on instead and nodded, and he felt a strange tug of pride for her.

 

“Good,” he said.

 

They had reached the gate again, but as Elizabeth was visibly still upset about something or other, he volunteered another round in the garden.  This time he asked her if she knew the names of the flowers, which drew out her best and most ladylike irritation just for him, and after a few conspicuous deep breaths, Elizabeth was herself enough to ask him, “And what of your secret, Commander?  You haven’t told me yours.”

 

He looked down at her, taken aback.  He had agreed to this, but he hadn’t thought of a secret in the first place, and when he’d heard hers… It had slipped his mind entirely.

 

“You know, we’re almost to the gate again, and this time I really _must_ go in and have some wine, I’m afraid, so you may not have the time for this-” he said, with some mocking grandiosity.  Elizabeth held onto his arm more tightly; it might have been intended as being like a pinch, but contextually, it felt uncomfortably flirtatious.

 

“James! It’s against the rules to hear a secret, and not tell one,” she said indignantly.

 

He stopped in the path.  Moonlight filtered through a large stone vase of ferns, dappling Elizabeth silver and white.  

 

“I apologize,” he said on reflection.  “I don’t have a secret of the enormity of the one which you have confided in me.  My secret is…. I don’t have any secrets.” It was a revelation even to him.

 

“Everyone has secrets,” said Elizabeth.

 

“No, that is my secret,” he said quietly, and she was so puzzled she let him continue along down the path without complaint.

 

“I have no secrets, no hidden friends or passions.  The only thing I think about is what I am doing in the navy, and where I want to go from there.  I am sure I _look_ as though there’s more to me than that - that there’s some depth to me; but there’s not.  Everything there is to know about me, anyone who meets me already knows.”

 

It was disquieting to say out loud.  He didn’t think this counted, but it was the honest truth.  There was nothing to count.

 

Elizabeth laid her other hand on his arm, and said, “You have my secret now,” softly, as though it were a gift she could give him.  It was oddly sweet: a sweeter gesture than he realized she was capable of.

 

She knew all there was to know about him - ambition and honor and pride were all he was - and yet it seemed that he knew very little of her.   He had thought of her as all childish enthusiasm and unruliness tucked into a pair of stays and a dress, but apparently there was more to her than there was to himself, and he realized, with a strange, glowing sort of satisfaction what it meant that she had let him have a glimpse of it.

 

“Elizabeth. Miss Swann,” he said courteously, as they stood at the gate, and prepared to return to the veranda; and then he looked at her, taking her gently by the hand when she removed it from his arm.

 

“May I…. would you do me the honor of….”  He thought of her practicing teasing with him earlier, and willed himself to think of this, too, as practice.  But he found he only wished he had had practice for this practice. “After I’ve left Port Royal again. May I… write to you?”

 

She looked startled, but neither excited nor relieved. “Yes, naturally,” she said.  He found himself smiling at her impulsively. She tried to match it, but was visibly attempting to work out what his asking her meant, and wondering if he would give her any cause to regret her generosity, even as she walked slowly through the gate and glanced back at him from the veranda.

 

“Great.  Wonderful,” he said. “I need the practice, and I have no one else to write to but my sister-in-law.”  

 

Elizabeth wrinkled her nose, but seemed relieved. “I thought you asked in the hopes you could supervise me.”

 

“I know full well, Miss Swann, that even if i were here to do that, you would not take my advice; what good is it to write a letter full of it?”  She giggled to herself at that, but her smile vanished when he laid his hand on the door handle.

 

“Commander Norrington!”

 

He paused.

 

“Yes?”

 

“....My secret.  Promise you’ll keep it.”

 

He reached for her hand, bent over it with all conventional propriety, and gave it a delicate kiss.

 

“You have my word, Miss Swann.”

 

She smiled reflexively, finally seeming content.  “And I shall keep your secret too,” she said, stepping into the doorway, turning around to bend and whisper to him: “ _that you are very boring_ ,” before spinning around and gracefully blending into the party.

 

James stayed on the veranda until he could stop smiling, and then returned to the party.

 

A joyous whistle rang through the air outside, culminating in a beautiful explosion.  After a delay caused by one man in charge of the proceedings growing too drunk to continue, a replacement had been found, and the fireworks display had returned to follow its original schedule.

 


End file.
